1. Field of Invention
Apparatus and method for the filling of cavity pans with bakery dough for the production of cookies, bon-bons, "butter-balls", or the like.
2. Prior Art
Conventional cookies, bon-bons, "butter-balls", or the like, have previously been made by using conventional cookie machines of the following types:
Extruders which force dough through an array of orifices in an on-off fashion, which work well with thinner and batter-like doughs.
Extruder-wire cutters which force thicker doughs through orifices whereafter a thin wire cuts the extruded dough into pieces. The resultant pieces may obviously have many shapes and thicknesses and these devices are sometimes referred to as a "wire cut depositor".
Rotary cutters which are in fact rotary cookie cutters and widely used in the industry for production of Oreo.TM. cookies, butter cookies, and a host of others. Such rotary-molded cookies rarely exceed 1/4 inch in thickness for obvious technological reasons.
Butter-ball cookies and like cookies cannot be made on any of the foregoing machines, because the dough involved is simply too "short", thick, and/or non-cohesive for their use. One obvious shortcoming of the existing machines is that they do not pack dough but only form it, whereas cookies and the like made from thicker, tougher, more viscous dough must be packed tightly and not simply formed. Of all the machines available, one called a Morrow "Cut-Roll.TM." will extrude and cut a piece of menstruum and then roll it into a ball. Marzipan balls are sometimes made in this manner and by such a machine. The device is understood to have become obsolete and it works in an entirely different manner and on an entirely different principle than employed according to the present invention and would not in any event effect the objectives thereof.
In addition, various yeast-raised dough-forming devices are available for making bagels, rolls, breadsticks, and the like, but none of these can form "butterball" dough or the like, because such dough is too thick and/or non-cohesive to itself whereas it generally sticks to everything else.
The concept of "pumping" or otherwise driving dough into a cavity, which we here refer to as "injection/compaction", "compaction", or "forcing", is not a new concept. Molded cast iron pans have been available at least since the beginning of the century, and previous practice generally involved manually pressing of dough into cast iron pans and then placing the pans into the oven.
According to our own previous experience in the production of baked goods, e.g. cookies, bon-bons, or "butter-balls", our own best efforts in the production of such products by baking in a cavity pan or employing a cavity pan prior to baking, involved numerous independent and difficultly-effected steps, all conducted by hand.
A search carried out at the U.S. Patent Office in Class 99, Subclass 353; Class 426, Subclasses 496 and 503; and Class 425, Subclass 17, failed to turn up anything remotely like the method or apparatus of the present invention. The state of the art of handling dough was generally disclosed in Harber, U.S. Pat. No. 2,045,228 and Dryg U.S. Pat. No. 3,787,597. Mason U.S. Pat. No. 1,961,566 discloses a forming/dividing device including a ribbed, curved pressure board; Akesson U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,916 discloses an apparatus in which a piston compresses dough on a belt; Longenecker U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,025 and Voegtlin U.S. Pat. No. 4,750,413 disclose apparatus in which a movable dough-flattening means is provided; and Thompson U.S. Pat. No. 4,147,809 discloses a dough-urging and dough-flattening means in an apparatus for forming dough. Nothing more relevant to the present invention was found in the search. Nor was anything of relevance found in a search through the 394 pages of the book "Cookie and Cracker Technology", Second Edition, by Matz and Matz, published by AVI Publishing Company, Inc., Westport, Connecticut, USA.
The present invention involves the new and unobvious concept of employing a spinning wheel (herein referred to as an "injection/compaction" or "forcing" or just "compaction" roller or drum), which is generally of stainless steel, as a "rolling pin", which in principle creates a hydraulic pressure with the dough being filled into the cavity pans comprising the hydraulic medium, i.e., the dough. This has been found to create sufficient pumping action to effect the injection/compaction necessary to effect the objectives of the present invention. The forces, which are at work during the process and which are provided by the apparatus of the present invention, are relatively large and the favorable result we have obtained was not at all predictable.
The doughs involved generally are "short", dense, thick, sticky, turgid, discontinuous, non-cohesive, and non-flowing and, unlike most doughs, they contain little or no added liquid to render them workable or machinable. They may be, for example, basically a shortbread dough comprising nut particles. They have historically been made by forming into balls by hand rolling and, subsequently and by us, by manually pressing the dough into cavities of a cavity pan and then baking in the pan. The dough employed in making such pastries as butterballs or the like is so tough that it takes great effort to place it into any shape at all and, accordingly, it must be packed, manually or mechanically, for the final confectionery or cookie to stay together in the manner which, we have found, could be effected previously only by hand rolling, after which we proceeded to develop our own novel cavity pan approach.
There has, accordingly, been a long-felt need in the art for a better method and apparatus for the production of confectionery of the type previously described, especially involving extremely tough or dense or viscous or thick and sticky dough of the type previously described, and the present invention provides both such advantageous method and apparatus for effecting this highly-desirable result.